For Day Traders, German Index Is Overnight Sensation
Night Hours Let Amateurs Keep Daytime Jobs; 'It's Like a Videogame' By IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 19, 2004; Page A1
Sitting in his pajamas at 2 a.m. in his home in Chicago, Anthony Lioce pounded frantically at his computer on a recent day while his wife and son slept.
The Eurex, a huge electronic exchange in Frankfurt, had just opened. Mr. Lioce, 33 years old, was wagering money on the direction of an index of German blue-chip stocks called the DAX.
He guessed the DAX would go up and it slipped backward, wiping out hundreds of dollars. He bet it would go down and it leapt upward. For two hours, he says, "I just lit off nonstop -- 'bam bam bam' like a machine gun." By 4 a.m., he had traded these DAX "futures contracts" 94 times, losing $1,000. He went back to bed for a couple of hours, then got up to start his nine-to-five job as an electrical engineer.
The DAX is the latest hotspot for "day traders" -- quick-triggered amateurs who buy and sell securities, often from home computers. Among the DAX's attractions: rapid price swings offering potential profits, low account-minimum requirements and, perhaps best of all, hours that let day traders trade at night.
Day traders swelled to more than 100,000 in the late 1990s when towering Internet stock prices and online access gave them a chance to make -- or lose -- a lot of money quickly. Their ranks began to decline in 2000, when the bear market set in. Further spoiling the fun, new Federal rules in 2001 required that people trading stocks more than four times a week keep $25,000 in their accounts at all times.
An intrepid band stuck it out, looking into other securities in search of untapped opportunities. They flitted into currencies and commodities, and breathed life into a whole new animal called E-minis. These are smaller versions of futures contracts for big U.S. stock indices that can be electronically traded with as little as $4,000 in a brokerage account. Since January, day traders have helped drive a 500% rise in trades of one of the E-mini futures contracts for the Russell 2000 index of small stocks.
"But with the volatility now drying up on E-minis, we're all searching for the next big thing," says Robin Dayne, a Las Vegas-based trader who plans to head to California later this month for a course in DAX trading.
DAX-trading schools are popping up around the country. "Trading the DAX is Like Trading the Nasdaq in the Late '90s!" declares an online promotion for a $316 DAX tutorial written by 25-year-old Mark Oryhon. Mr. Oryhon claims to be one of the biggest DAX traders in the world, with 1% to 5% of the daily trading volume. He teaches nifty DAX-trading tips, including the "opening range reversal fake-out breakout strategy."
Mark Perrault drove a fuel-oil truck for his family business in northern Maine for 17 years before switching to day-trading E-minis a few years ago. The father of three says he lost about $2,000 over the summer. So he signed up for a $4,500 home-DAX-trading course and began simulating DAX trades. He plans to begin trading for real later this month, though he has not yet made money on paper.
Traded from 3 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time, the DAX also lets day traders keep day jobs while pursuing their dream of getting rich by playing the markets. "At night, the world seems less chaotic," says Mr. Oryhon, who works out of his Houston condo.
This is not the crowd that German exchange officials had in mind in the late 1990s when they got permission from U.S. commodities regulators to bring the DAX into the U.S.
Eurex spokesman Walter Allwicher says he worries that amateurs will get burned going up against professionals, and that the reputation of the DAX will suffer just as its popularity is surging on Wall Street. Mr. Oryhon doesn't disagree, saying most amateur DAX traders lose out to the pros. "I see a lot of people get whacked."
The U.S. accounts for a quarter of the 100,000 average daily sales of DAX futures contracts, up from five percent three years ago. Much of this activity comes from big banks and hedge funds, which use the DAX to offset risks from their U.S. and other positions.
Some 68 U.S. firms now are Eurex members, up from just a handful three years ago. Individuals must set up an account with a member or an affiliated trading firm that can put trades through a member.
The DAX tracks 30 popular stocks listed on the Frankfurt Exchange, including DaimlerChrysler and Adidas. A contract represents the value of the index at a given time, measured in points. The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 U.S. stocks closed at 9956 points on Monday, while the DAX closed at 3915 points.
A DAX contract's price moves in increments known as "ticks." Each DAX point is worth two ticks. At the current exchange rate, each DAX tick is worth about $15. A DAX contract at Monday's close was worth $117,450 ($15 x 2 x 3915).
Traders need little money down to buy and sell these futures contracts, particularly if they are trading "intraday" or getting out of their positions before the market closes. With the press of a button, they enter an agreement to pay a set price for the value of the index in the future. But they don't actually have to fulfill the contract unless they hold it until it expires -- in three, six or nine months.
Day traders generally need a couple thousand dollars in their account per contract to protect against potential losses, since the index lately has not been moving more than 55 points in a day. If they don't cash out by the time the market closes, however, they may be required to pony up more than $10,000 per contract under Eurex "margin" rules.
"It's like a videogame," says Mr. Lioce, referring to the numbers and multicolored lights jumping across his screen that show current prices for a DAX contract. He clicks to buy or sell, and his order zooms into the Eurex system.
After some luck trading telecommunications stocks in the late 1990s, Mr. Lioce moved to E-minis. But it became hard for him to trade during the day after his company blocked Internet access to discourage employees who had formed a trading club. At first, he says, he tried walking his 25-year-old wife, Carolyn, through trades on the phone when she was not working her job as a manager of a Restoration Hardware store. Once, he says, she lost $2,000 on Cisco in a few minutes and got cold feet.
What's a trader to do? "I began trading the DAX in the middle of the night," Mr. Lioce says.
For Mr. Lioce and others, the DAX represents the latest hope for financial independence. With some electrical engineers he knows "working twelve-dollar-an-hour jobs at Starbucks and other places," he says, he lost faith in corporations. He lost faith in mutual funds after relatives lost money. And he lost faith in stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange after reading stories about specialists on the floor stepping in front of customer trades to make money for themselves. "You can only trust yourself," he says.
Since he began trading the DAX three months ago, he says, he has lost about $2,000 -- or 10% of the money he has reserved for DAX trading. He says his wife lost $3,000 to $5,000 on the DAX. The losses do not take into account the $2,000 a month they spend on trading commissions, software, data services and a high-speed phone line.
Still, says Mr. Lioce, "I'd like to quit my full-time job and move into this." He adds, "I see opportunities in the DAX that I don't see in my career."
Write to Ianthe Jeanne Dugan at ianthe.dugan@wsj.com
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